


Lay your ghosts to rest, they deserve better than your death wish

by CriticalDoodle



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, I will go down swinging good sir, Jonny Sims best meet me in the parking lot of a Denny's at 3am with a baseball bat cause, Let Jon have some form of therapy, Or happiness, Sad kind of humor, Set in-between episode 131 and 132, What happened after Jon resting and before entering the coffin, whichever comes first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 23:05:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18292040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CriticalDoodle/pseuds/CriticalDoodle
Summary: There is a moment between the lies fed to Melanie and the suffocating embrace of the coffin. A moment in which Jon allows himself to sink into the past and say his piece.





	Lay your ghosts to rest, they deserve better than your death wish

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing against J.Sims but I will fight him if it means getting his character a moment of rest.

The recorder clicks off with a practiced ease that Jon has never known.

He sits at his office desk, hands folded on top of one another, and eyes drawn to the bloody anchor the flesh promised. A curved rib splatters against old wood though Jon has tried to lessen the effect through a couple of tissues, a countermeasure that does little to soothe the restlessness of his mind. Will it work? Will he falter again? Can he save Daisy? The questions are answered confidently by the lulling thudding of a mental door but to fully know, he’d have to open the door. Drown and be rewarded. Die a thousands deaths as to live one day without fear. He keeps the door locked and steadies himself. He is unsure when he stands from his seat and is less sure as he circles his desk with a somber expression. The worn away wood retreats from his fingers as they graze the scratches of past and new choices - the consequences of each bending the wood in an unnatural way. Quiet reminders, he huffs, quiet and painful.

As he settles against his desk, leaned against the wooden frame with arms crossed over the chest, glasses pressed against his forehead, he takes into account the awaiting coffin. It greets his gaze expectantly. Its chains wound around brittle wooden planks, a song of thousands buried and alive begging for solace beyond the wet embrace of the Earth, an underlying scent of rainfall and mud, all of it staring back at him unblinking without eyes. There’s a bitter half-smile flat on his lips as his eyes skip over the coffin and toward the lone recorder sitting on the edge of his desk. Two apologies laid inside that recorder and while he couldn’t find the right words to properly explain, they were enough. His apologies were half-assed and littered with a twinge of self-deprecation that he couldn’t remove no matter how many times he tried to find adequate words. Idly, Jon’s reminded of the words of the late distortion who stole the name of Michael - _“How does a melody describe itself?”_ \- and Jon responds with a question of his own, _“How does a monster define its humanity? Its guilt? How does a monster describe its fear?”_

There is no appropriate answer.

There is no apology that gives the situation justice.

There is nothing besides a monster and a coffin and a hope to do something right.

Another recorder sits heavy in his pocket and Jon fiddles with it, soothing his thoughts as his fingers pressed against the defined edges and corners. His index hovers over the start button when a thought hits him - is this all he has to say? Two half-assed apologies and a falsified confidence that he will succeed? Is this what’s left of him?

He jerks his hand away from the recorder. Diverts his attention from the coffin. The thought doesn’t leave him. It drags him from the mental door he guards and throws him into the memory of a past life he wishes to return to but begs to discard and Jon breathes and _oh_ -

“I’m an idiot, you know?”

He breezes through the words nearly casually. His eyes flutter shut and as he breathes in, there’s freedom in the empty air. A sort of dizziness which descends entirely in his mind between the faint lull of the Earth beneath his feet and the pulsating pain of his own consequences; yes, he licked his lips, he could call that a freedom of sorts. The office around him is forgotten within that moment. The recorder is clicked off. After all, there’s no point in recording the words meant for the death and lost.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure you are…you were all well aware of that fact.”

The stiffness of his arms release and he changes his position to grip the desk with nails tracing the worn edges and splintered fragments which encompass him. “I am an idiot and like all other idiots, I cannot stop myself from making poor decisions.” He pauses with an afterthought. “Though I suspect that climbing into a coffin marked by the Buried and purposefully suffocating myself in soil among other things, well uh, to perhaps save someone is a bit more…idiotic than usual.”

Out in the open air, he cannot help but choke out a laugh at the humor in it all. “Another scar to be added to the collection soon. That is, if I survive.”

The empty air stills at the hypothetical. 

With eyes closed, Jon allows himself to fade from the room around him. The floor beneath his feet, the splitters digging into his skin, the coffin, the recorders, they all fade away as darkness fills his vision. Then, flickers. Flickers of a past life, past mistakes, past consequences, and ghosts. With his eyes closed, Jon sees the ghosts of another man. A human man brimming with misplaced paranoia and poorly hidden fear of playing into the hands of an unknown evil. A human man who buried himself under the guise of a skeptic because to admit his own beliefs meant to give his fears a portion of his reality, his precious reality, which would demand lives in the form of scattered sacrifices and forgotten faces. A human man who failed at saving those closest to him but not emotionally, never emotionally, those closest to his trade of work and faked skepticism. A human man who died and should’ve stayed dead if he were stronger, better, anything other than the pitiful corpse of a pathetic waste of a man. A weak, parasitic human man who ruined every soul he set out to know and, honestly?

A man he wished to be again.

The first ghost Jon sees is as familiar as they are unfamiliar. Hair too long, hair too short, eyes widened in fear, eyes narrowed in anticipation, calliope, calliope, a confused smile curling at the edges of lips like a cat, a shuddering grin reaching both cheeks with feigned ignorance, a loyal assistant, a stranger, a friend, a monster; Jon’s heart stops and starts again.

“Sasha,” The name pours from his lips like acid but there’s no bitterness towards her, never towards her, as the desk splinters under the pressure of his grasp. “Sasha, I…”

The apology lodges itself in his throat. The ghost shifts between forms and its existence is as brief as it is endless when Jon allows the apology to drift off into the open air. Memories blur and contrast one another and while the knowledge of what happened and what misfortune claimed Sasha James slams against his mental door, he relaxes and slides the deadbolt to lock the door further.

He decides on a confession instead. “I think sometimes back on our conversation about, and uh do not laugh but, about the pronunciation of calliope.”

The air around him shimmers and a huff causes Jon to bend, “Well, yes, it’s an awful word to get so hung up on, I _know_. Calliope, Calliope, or as how the Americans try, calliope. For such a troublesome instrument, you’d think someone would just settle on one pronunciation and move on to destroying the damn thing but, oh…how would you phrase it, again? Priorities? Priorities, Sasha, priorities.”

Jon freezes when laughter echoes in the air. Genuine laughter which sounds like a mix of sharp breaths and underlying hums - a sort of laughter that has no place in his memory, so unfamiliar that his stomach clenches, and Jon rolls his eyes as he allows it to wash over him. He doesn’t flinch away but waves his hand. He follows the laughter with his own indignant, “I know what a meme is, Sasha. We’ve discussed this, haven’t we?” argument. When the noise cuts off, Jon finds himself swallowing back another apology and instead he watches. Watches as the ghost’s shifting form turns to look toward what he assumes is the coffin. A contorted, jutting finger and the familiar lecture of a disappointed friend floods his mind without restraint and Jon falls back into the routine without thought.

His hands raise in mock-surrender, his brow raises, and he shakes his head with a somber expression. “I know, I know.” He calms assuredly. “I have to, you must understand that. Please, understand that.”

 _No. You don’t._ Sasha is his reasoning, his impulse control, his level-headed assistant, and as her ghost sinks away, the words of _please don’t_ never enter the air. She’s gone. She was never truly there to begin with and Jon finds that her form is quickly replaced by a clearer image of a ghost with ash dancing along his burnt flesh, hair singed, and a look of murderous rage present on his remaining features.

 _Hey boss_ is the first warning Jon hears before being slammed against the desk, papers flying across the office, and the air knocked out of his lungs. The second is a resounding _what’s up_ that he manages to catch as he avoids the following shove though his knees hit the ground with a shuddering crunch. A gasp leaves his lips shakily. There are no physical blows yet Jon bows under the weight of an explosion caught mid-launch as smoke clogs his throat and leaves each of his words rough and scratchy, breathless and begging. _Oh, get up Boss. You’re alive, aren’t you?_

“Not for long,” Joan croaks out assuredly. “Not for long, Tim. I promise.”

Something falters at that, and while Jon remains on the ground unmoving, he does feel the air shift around him. The bubbling anger that fills his veins with a molten spike of adrenaline does not leave though the sensation of a hand grips Jon’s shoulder. The motion is hesitant, unsure, and then all at once there. A tighter grip and then Jon is shoved forward into an embrace that is neither warm nor existent. There’s a trembling energy engulfing his very being that removes the air entirely from his lungs as his hands claw and scratch against the form for air. His eyes are burning, closed with evaporating tears that stain his cheeks, and his lungs fill with ash and soot that coat the lining of his throat on the way down. It’s painful and Jon cries out before throwing his arms around the ghostly form and burying his face in its shoulder. 

Anger and helplessness, Jon cannot help but think to himself, never a good way to die.

 _You’re alive, boss._ The presence hammers in and it leaves him shaking. _You’re alive_.

There’s no apology between them. No bridge that can be built between the dead and the living, the human and the monster, the friend and the killer, which can ease the regret. The embrace is too short but Jon clings to it and without an apology, tries something different. He focuses his attention on a memory of an April Fool’s prank. He images the day again in its entirety of plastic spiders piled high on top his desk and Tim’s grinning face as a past version of himself lets out a scream that is borderline hysterical before realizing the plastic element. He sees Sasha, the real one, grabbing the closest manilla folder to slap Tim’s forehead as Martin rushes to brush away the spiders. He sees Tim throwing his head back in laughter as the past man catches his breath. He sees the aftermath of the prank in his office as Tim gives a hearted apology and Jon brushes him off and when Tim goes in for a hug and it lasts a second too long though both say nothing against it, when Jon feels the past sensation of fingers across his neck mimicking a spider - he can only say one thing.

“Dick.”

Tim’s fading laughter gives him enough closure to take a breath of clean air.

So, he does. With eyes closed, Jon reaches towards the desk to help him off the ground. He steadies himself and follows the desk’s edges to his seat. His eyes remain closed as he sits, leaning against the chair’s frame and breathing. There is a final ghost awaiting his words, his confession, and its the ghost that cannot appear before him. That will not ever appear before him. There’s no presence of this ghost besides the loneliness in his own heart and the emptiness of the mug sitting center of his desk.

“Martin?”

Jon begs the question with an amount of vulnerability that the other ghosts have granted him. A moment of humanity that he clutches onto in hopes of a response. There is none. A thousand previous apologies play on loop in his head though none have any value to them.

“Martin, I…”

There’s little to be said. To speak to the dead is easier than speaking to the lost but living. One hears and the other listens, but in the end, neither care for his words.

“Please, be safe.”

It’s all Jon can settle on.

The air remains empty, the silence condemning, but there was never anyone else in there with him.

Jon opens his eyes, looks at his anchor and the lone recorder, clicks his own on, and faces the song of the thousands buried alone.

 

.

..

…

….

…..

….

…

..

.

 

And somehow, somewhere between the creaking of a coffin and the resounding scream of Melanie as she enters the office with a cup of tea in hand, does a lost man stop mid-key in his report and breathe out a soft, “Oh Jon, no.”

The air remains empty.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment below so I can know if y'all would like to read other small stories? I've got a lot in the works, just testing the waters now. 
> 
> Thanks for reading it!


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